Everything is a compromise, isn't it?
Perhaps the most frequently used phrase when I talk to patients, particularly at the start of treatment, perhaps the most commonly used phrase I use when I talk to myself as a patient when I think about treatment.
Trade-offs are just a fundamental part of life.
Sometimes, you make a conscious trade-off, like saving money now for later, even though you might not get to the later one. But a lot of the time, we make unconscious trade-offs.
Unconscious trade-offs are like when I played 30 hours of basketball as a boy, not realising that it would contribute later in life to me having a left leg that I can't use very well and is now shaped like a banana (according to my family's description of me now 'banana leg').
It was interesting to think about this recently when Alison and I were having a conversation which raised the point if I knew then what I know now, would I have still played the basketball or done the triathlon, and for me, the instant answer is yes.
Even though the trade-off at that time was unconscious, it was worth it. Also, it's really important not to harbour regrets about the choices you made with limited information.
This blog rumbled about in my mind for a long time after I'd watched Kelce, the Netflix documentary about Jason Kelce (not Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift's boyfriend) but Jason, his brother.
It's a brilliant sports documentary. Watch it if you like that sort of thing. It shows how damaged and broken someone who plays sport in Kelce's position becomes as they reach the fourth decade of their life.
The fundamental story around Kelce's documentary is about the march to the Super Bowl to compete against his brother and then to decide whether he should continue for another year.
He understands that he's getting to the stage where he might not be able to play with his young Children. (I associated with that a lot after I could no longer run or play football with Callum or even kick the ball at my boys' football sessions.)
He also understands that he may have permanently damaged his health, his neural capacity or capabilities for later in life and massively increased his risk of dementia and other neurological injuries, but he is still prepared to consider continuing even for a short time because he understands in the middle of the trade-off that it might be better to live a short life and be happy than to live a long life miserably.
In the Kelce documentary, they mention 'The Cape' by Guy Clark. It's supposedly Kelce's favourite song, and his wife gives him the most beautiful present, a wooden representation of the first bar of the song to put on the wall of the house.
She's dead honest about it and says that she has no idea whether it's true or not; that is a representation, but she loves the sentiment, and I love it, too.
And so, I went and found The Cape and read about Guy Clark, the country and Western singer-songwriter who was not particularly famous but who was prolific and respected.
The song is about not understanding that you can't fly, so being able to fly because you never knew you couldn't.
That's what Kelce was trying to do through his career.
He wasn't looking down from the tightrope; he was just carrying on.
That's what we should all do.
Too often, we try to see whether we can make it perfect, to draw a map or a laminate towards the finish line when we always knew that it was just about the journey and the journey would take trade-off after trade-off, conscious and unconscious, and we will never arrive.
The link to The Cape by Guy Clark is here: an acoustic session from 2011 where an old man sings a beautiful song, a beautiful piece of poetry in country and Western style.
If you've got a minute, I promise it's worth it.
Blog Post Number - 3738
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